My father's hands are maps. They hold forty-two years of a country I've never lived in, calluses from a factory floor in Guangzhou, a faded burn scar from a wok that slipped in 1997. When he reached America, those hands learned a new language: the double-tap of a checkout screen, the zip of a credit card reader, the gentle fold of a takeout container.

He owns a Chinese restaurant in Raleigh, North Carolina. He works 73 hours a week. He has never taken a vacation. I grew up behind the counter, doing homework in the booth by the window, learning what it means to build something from the ground up with your body.

The problem I most want to solve is the invisible tax on immigrant entrepreneurs. My father pays it every day: in the hours spent navigating insurance paperwork he barely understands, in the restaurant consultant he couldn't afford and didn't know he needed, in the health code citations that could have been avoided with the right information.

This summer, I built a prototype — a bilingual (English-Mandarin) resource hub for immigrant small business owners in our county. I partnered with the local SCORE chapter, translated three regulatory guides, and conducted interviews with eleven business owners. The county commissioner's office called it "the most actionable proposal we've received from a student."

My father's hands built something real. I want to spend my life building the systems that protect people like him.